Jun 17 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
I wrote today against Trumpstalgia — the perverse impulse to give him undeserved credit for not wrecking a recovery he inherited while resolving him of all blame for a failed federal response to Covid and soaring crime.
The key is to arbitrarily switch standards — you’re supposed to not worry that Trump’s stated economic ideas don’t make sense because the outcomes were fine, but not worry that the crime outcomes were terrible because he said police are good.
Jun 6 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
This New Republic article suggests that people like me who are critical of the Sunrise Movement “don’t really get climate activism.”
Which is true, so yesterday I asked Sunrise for some help in understanding.
newrepublic.com/article/182295…I was told that this document contains the best available evidence for the causal efficacy of Sunrise’s voter mobilization efforts.
I think if you read it extremely generously you will see it contains no evidence at all.
sunrisemovement.org/report/general…
Jun 2 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Instead of just whining that Democrats should be more aggressive about this stuff, I am going to do a thread where I highlight good behavior.
Be the change! https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1797354844539216331
They disagree about Israel, but AOC and Fetterman both support aggressive partisan politics. 
Apr 23 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The stated position of SJP groups (see point 5) is that even if Biden successfully pressures Israel into a unilateral ceasefire, withdrawal from Gaza, resumption of humanitarian aid, etc. they would still maintain the campus occupations until the "right of return" is fulfilled. https://twitter.com/UMNSDS/status/1782714546559578247
Why bring this up?
Well, I think Trump is really bad, and that abortion rights, tax policy, climate change, and the American public's health care are very important issues so I am annoyed that pro-Palestinian protestors are doing a lot to sandbag Biden's re-election.
Apr 22 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If you ask a typical Israeli about a Palestinian state they'd say it's fine idea in theory, but in practice they're opposed to any meaningful concessions because Palestinians will never accept Israel and independent Palestine will be used as a platform for new attacks.If you think that's wrong, paranoid, or mistaken then you need an advocacy movement whose slogans and demands go out of their way to *avoid* re-litigating the questions of 1948 — exactly the opposite of radical chic posturing.
Mar 20 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
In case anyone is still covering the IVF question, today's new Republican Study Committee budget specifically endorses the idea that embryos have the full legal rights of persons under the 14th Amendment. 
They're not going to say "we support Rep Mooney's bill to ban IVF" but that's a ban on IVF as well as a national ban on all abortions at any week with no exceptions.
Feb 13 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Braindead rightists are enraged by my suggestion that people worried about the budget deficit should support the candidate who has proposals to reduce the budget deficit. https://twitter.com/brien_lundin/status/1757236950577143905
To be clear, I’m not even asking anyone to vote for Joe Biden.
If your priority is corporate tax cuts and such then by all means vote for Trump!
But don’t run around pretending to be motivated by the national debt while you do that.
Feb 11 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
One notable thing about the 2024 primary is it’s easy to find polling evidence that Nikki Haley would be a stronger candidate than Trump, but GOP primary voters and most conservative influencers apparently don’t care.Conversely, in the 2020 primary there was a good deal of polling evidence that Joe Biden was a stronger nominee than Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and it seems like Dem elected officials — and ultimately voters — cared a lot about this.
Feb 4 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The context for something absurd like “Woke Kindergarten” is that 10-20 years ago there was a lot of interest in trying to advance equality by improving basic schooling which generated stakeholder demand for reasons why pushing schools for measurable results was actually racist. 
This is also related to the effort to get people to stop saying that diversity (or lack thereof) in the workplace is in part a downstream consequence of stuff that happens in school.
Jan 7 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Really interesting paper on the realities of household financial decision-making
nber.org/papers/w24161
A related one — while in theory high interest credit products could be serving a useful market niche, in practice the people using them don’t know what they’re talking about.
Dec 18, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
What happens to grocery prices if the government spends a bunch of money on deporting 14% of the agricultural workforce?
slowboring.com/p/trump-wont-m…
If you’re a native born American who specifically aspires to go pick fruit in the Central Valley or work in a slaughterhouse this program will raise your wages, but for anyone who works in a store or an office or construction site or factory it just means higher prices.
Dec 3, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“Smarter people have more extreme views” holds pretty generally, which is why you see much more psychotic takes from Princeton students than from kids at normal colleges.Robert Nozick was a brilliant teacher but I remember him sketching out some elaborate scheme for replacing government safety regulation of canned food with a group of competing canned food certification firms.
Nov 6, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Researchers, HUD, and the journalists who rely on their data use "homelessness" to mean the situation when a person does not have a home.
But people complaining about "homelessness" usually mean something like "people acting out on the street."
slowboring.com/p/americas-two…These are both real things that happened.
On any given night in America, there are lots of people sleeping in cars or shelters — often employed people — dealing with a bad situation and not bothering anyone.
Oct 28, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Take with something for everyone: Most of the criticism I read of what Israel is doing in Gaza seems unfair to me.
But what’s true is that what Israel has been doing in the West Bank (not just now but for the last 20+ years) undermines the legitimacy of everything else.The version of this policy that would have moral and political integrity would be a proper grand coalition that freezes out the far right parties, a “Nixon goes to China” moment on settlements, bringing the PA into regional talks with the Gulf states, etc etc etc
Oct 25, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The signature flaw of far-left activist groups on everything from climate to Palestine to housing to policing is refusing to engage in any kind of specific way with how anything is supposed to happen beyond mystifications about political will.I take everyone at their word that when they say “Free Palestine from the river to the sea” they mean a secular democracy with equal rights for all and not “kill all the Jews.”
But how do you accomplish that? That’s not what Hamas is asking for or how they run Gaza.
Oct 19, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
A concept that we have lost sight of in the era of internet-induced bad tempers is that if you have a very unpopular political view that you nonetheless strongly feel is correct, you need to try to find ways to convince people who for whatever reason don’t share your view.Suppose you want Joe Biden to try harder to restrain Israel. You are climbing three hills:
— More people think Biden has done too little for Israel than too much
— Most Americans agree on the merits with Israel’s response
— Pre-attack, Americans’ sympathies were with Israel
Jul 24, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I wonder how much the Manhattan Project and subsequent framing of nuclear reactors as a technology whose primary purpose was to manufacture fissile material for bombs wound up harming the long-term prospects for nuclear power.The world's first nuclear power station, Calder Hall, generated electricity as a co-benefit of manufacturing fissile material for the UK nuclear weapons program.
Jun 23, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I think there's a less vibes-y way to reach the Zumbrun conclusion here that doesn't rely on Cass' slippery statistics — Baumol's law and opportunity costs. https://twitter.com/PTBwrites/status/1672229280464396292
Precisely because wages and living standards are rising, the cost of paying other people to watch your kids — something we should construe broadly as including school, camp, the soccer team, etc. as well as child care — has gone up relative to average incomes.
Jun 23, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I've been joking around about this, but the way you can tell the Supreme Court corruption scandal is genuinely scandalous and genuinely corrupt is by following the logic of their own jurisprudence on public corruption issues.The justices themselves have officially ruled that there is nothing wrong with a wealthy individual providing an ongoing stream of financial benefits to a public official who is in a position to make decisions that favor him as long as there's no explicit quid pro quo.
Jun 21, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Doing a podcast debate about vaccine science with cranks is dumb … but the question of what we should actually do to increase vaccine uptake is worth talking about.
slowboring.com/p/a-vaccine-di…In 1953 you’d say that vaccination is good so we should work the consent-manufacturing industry and make sure that everyone agrees vaccination is good.
But this kind of information control strategy doesn’t work anymore and it’s not going to return.
https://t.co/HO3GdyQm30slowboring.com/p/a-vaccine-di…
Jun 19, 2023 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
Trump turned your kids trans by weakening Clean Water Act rules https://t.co/HEcdAl7Sfo
https://twitter.com/BenjaminGoggin/status/1670755204403277825
Back in 2002, we had a study showing atrazine “demasculinizes” frogs, disrupting their endocrine system and altering their sexual maturation and functioning.
Evidence grew stronger over time and this was seen as a lib point calling for stronger regulation.
